Chapter 1

My wife was blind.

Sweet-tempered. Softhearted.

I always loved it when tears spilled from the corners of his eyes and he begged me in that hoarse, tearful voice.

He was just a blind boy a wealthy family had brought home for an arranged marriage. Of course he was supposed to spoil me, put up with me, and give me everything I wanted.

Then he jumped from the top floor without a moment’s hesitation.

A few days later, I followed him.

When I opened my eyes again, I was eighteen.

……

An Yu was dead.

On the day of his birthday party, he had jumped from the top floor. The fall had left him a bloody, broken mess.

When the news reached me, I was still deciding how to toss him the birthday present I’d just picked up with exactly the right amount of indifference.

I had my dignity to maintain. Couldn’t have the little blind thing getting ideas about how much I liked him.

Then I missed my footing on the stairs and tumbled down six or seven steps.

The jadeite peace pendant shattered across the floor.

Didn’t hurt a bit. I could still get up and head to the crematorium without so much as changing my expression.

The next day, I brought his ashes home in a daze.

The urn was made of Hetian jade. It still felt warm in my arms.

A grown man, reduced to barely a hundred grams.

I gave a cold little snort.

So being dead meant he could do whatever he pleased?

He could make someone like me carry something this heavy?

Well played.

I turned the house upside down.

Among An Yu’s few possessions, he’d left me not a single word.

He was blind. He couldn’t write.

But that phone of his was so smart it could record even the sound of his breathing with perfect clarity.

Nothing on there, either.

Heartless little thing.

I’d made him feel good so many times in those three years. Even if that didn’t count for anything, surely I deserved some credit for trying.

And the ungrateful brat had just left me behind.

I wandered through the house in a fog and happened to switch on the security footage.

It wasn’t because I wanted to see him.

The lights were off. The computer screen hurt my eyes.

I rubbed them. They watered.

Before the birthday party, An Yu had sat alone for a long time, looking so small, a sheet of paper in his hands.

He’d felt his way across it to sign his name, then put it in the bedside drawer.

So he could write after all.

Late that night, I sat at the foot of the bed pouring vodka into my stomach. The divorce agreement An Yu had left me lay beside my hand.

An aching numbness spread from my heart all the way to my fingertips.

Clutching a sheet of paper I hadn’t signed, I went up to the top floor.